


Apple Flowers

by miyakowasure



Category: Kis-My-Ft2 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 19:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1237702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyakowasure/pseuds/miyakowasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year 1946 brought along a long yearned time of peace. To those who survived it gave new hope for the future, but also hardships and misery. How to reconstruct a world that had changed so much?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apple Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic three years ago but somehow I still like it so I decided to post it here, with some minor (grammar&vocabulary) edits.

\- - -

It was a warm evening in the middle of the spring. The kind of evening that had always inspired poets across centuries to praise the beauty of the nature. The cherry tree was glowing softly like a light pink cloud, yet the apple flowers where the ones that dazed Hiromitsu's senses.

 

The apple tree had stood there in the corner of the garden for decades. Its ragged branches were heavy and the tree couldn't stand upright without support anymore. Yet every year it bloomed prettily and reminded Hiromitsu of the summer that was soon to begin. He sighed quietly and closed his eyes to enjoy the scent of the white flowers even better. It felt so unbelievable that this year, too, he could see the apple flowers.

 

The young man felt the familiar dull anxiety in his mind when he remembered the dust of collapsed houses in his lungs, the tingling sound of broken glass under his boots and the sickening smell of burnt human flesh that had floated in the air. The desperate cries of people with brutal injuries and the heart-breaking weep of lost children still echoed in his ears through the birdsongs.

 

Only eight months earlier Hiromitsu had been wearing the green uniform of the Japanese army as he had been sent to help the suffering people who had lost so much. To save anything that was yet to be saved. To clear the ruins of Hiroshima.

 

After returning to the reserve in the autumn he had suffered from a disease called mild radiation sickness for a long time. After that he had been harassed by a stubborn fever for the whole winter. On the rare moments of having been able to think straight between fever ravings and throwing up he had just lain on his bed and stared at the ceiling with dull eyes, wishing for death to come sooner.

 

Yet he hadn't died. With Taisuke's careful treatment and help of the closest neighbors, the sickness had eventually given up. By the time the last snow melted, Hiromitsu was weak and pale but at least he was alive and could stand up from his bed.

 

How he wished Taisuke could have seen these apple flowers, too.

 

\- - -

 

The war had hit hard the small countryside village where everyone knew each other. During the long years all the adult men got called to the battle. Few had come back.

 

Tsukada and Kawai, along with their brothers, had gotten killed at the battlefront in Singapore. Goseki and his father had drowned near the Midway Islands when the Allies had scuttled the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi. Iida had stepped on a landmine in the Philippines. The radiation sickness had taken over Totsuka after their assignment in Hiroshima. Unlike Hiromitsu, the younger man had withered away in a week.

 

Besides Hiromitsu and Taisuke only Miyata and Yokoo had made it back home. The younger of them would never walk anymore and the older one was still tortured every night by horrible nightmares in which he was in the middle of the madness called ‘war’ again.

 

It hadn't been easy for the ones who had stayed either. The boys who had still been small kids at the beginning of the war had grown up into young men. Those boys were now the ones who had to take the places of the dead fathers and brothers, and carry the responsibility of their own lives as well as the welfare of their families.

 

Takashi, the oldest son of the Nikaido family, had begun to take care of his three younger siblings after their parents’ death. The youngest sister was only four years old and often, especially in the evenings, Hiromitsu could hear children crying in the next door. Whatever their oldest brother tried to soothe them, it was all in vain - there was no end to a child's longing for the lost parents.

 

Senga’s father had fallen in the same battle with Tsukada and Kawai. His older sister had been working in a nearby town until the factory had been bombed down in the middle of a workday. Senga was the only one left to help his old mother, and he worked hard to make living for the both of them. The boy who once had been so wild and careless had grown up into a serious and responsible young man. Diligence was never a bad thing, however, and it was even more important now that the assaulted nation of Japan was trying to get on its feet again. Even though there were darker shades in the young man's smile, he could still cheer Hiromitsu up a bit whenever they met at the village road.

 

Tamamori had completed his military service just before the end of the war, and he had been ordered into the same detachment with Iida. The first task had become his last one. Even though Tamamori had received serious injuries in the explosion, he had survived alive. However, the young man who returned from the hospital was a completely different person. The pressure of the battlefront and the cruel death of a close friend had crucially unsettled his mind, and Tamamori didn’t even recognize his own family members anymore. When talked to, he always smiled and nodded quietly and politely as if he was listening to a complete stranger. He only communicated with his dog nowadays, but instead of treating him as a dog Tamamori talked to him as if he were a human being.

 

As if he were Iida.

 

Hashimoto had lost his whole family. The friends and neighbors had taken care of him until one day the relatives of his mother had come and taken the boy to live with them in the north.

 

\- - -

 

A few white petals fell slowly to the ground; so beautiful yet so fragile. Just like people.

 

Hiromitsu would never forget what it felt like to hear about the death of a close friend. Another. Third. Many at once. The memory was as clear as the memory of being the one to press the trigger of the gun himself.

 

He didn’t know which one was worse.

 

A long, long time ago Hiromitsu had dreamt about war; the bravery, the exitement, and the glory of victory. Too soon he had been forced to see the cruel truth as each day had turned out to be a new fight for survival. Six long years of the war had taught him many things.

 

Not for self, but for country.

 

Never leave your comrades. Never surrender.

 

Kill or get killed.

 

During the war the instructions given by the platoon commander had echoed in Hiromitsu’s mind from day to day. He had always obeyed every command without exceptions but he had never found justification to his actions.

 

He didn’t have a family waiting for him to come back home, but most of the other men had - including those on the opposite side. Had those men really aimed their weapons at him because they had wanted to kill him? Could they have been like Hiromitsu himself; only fighting because they had been commanded to do so?

 

How many tears had been shed because of his bullets, Hiromitsu often wondered. How many women somewhere across the sea grieved for their fallen husbands? How many children had lost their fathers because of him?

 

One shot was enough to end a life.

 

One bomb was enough to turn a whole city to ash.

 

War served no one’s purposes.

 

\- - -

 

A blackbird that perched on a branch of the apple three stopped singing and flew up to the rooftop when Hiromitsu heard a sliding door opening behind him.

 

“Be careful of the doorsill,” he reminded quietly.

 

“I will. I know where it is.”

 

Taisuke walked slowly across the small garden and when he was close enough, Hiromitsu raised his hand on the man’s shoulder to tell him where he stood. Taisuke smiled, tilted his head, and took a deep breath.

 

“The apple tree is blooming. I could smell the scent even inside the house.”

 

“Mm. Yeah.”

 

“You came here to mope around by yourself again, right?”

 

Taisuke’s warm, gentle scolding startled Hiromitsu from his thoughts.

 

“I wasn’t. I was just watching these flowers and I thought -”

 

“You were thinking about the war,” the younger man finished the sentence for him, and Hiromitsu really couldn’t object.

 

”Haven’t I told you dozens of times already?” Taisuke sighed, wrapping his arms around Hiromitsu's thin waist from behind. “What we’ve lost we can’t get back. Worrying for the lost will only make you forget the things that you still have.”

 

“So you’re saying I’m not allowed to miss my friends?” Hiromitsu asked even though he knew the answer. They had talked about it so many times before.

 

”That’s not what I mean, you know it. What I mean is that you shouldn’t stay dwelling in those thoughts. You should be happy that they were our friends as long as they lived. We knew from the beginning that everyone would not make it back. We were all ready to die for our friends and families, remember? Our friends were brave and precious, and I’m sure they’d want you to smile when thinking about them.”

 

A soft breeze of wind brushed across the garden and rippled the leaves of a big maple on the other side of the house. Suddenly Hiromitsu felt as if Totsuka, Iida and all the others had been sitting up on the branches, looking down at him and smiling.

 

“Can you hear it? You’re not alone. The dead never leave us. We can't see but they are somewhere there, looking at us.”

 

When Hiromitsu still kept silent, Taisuke gave a sudden laughter and turned him around so that they were standing face to face.

 

“You don’t believe me? Then how do you explain you being really there even though I can’t see you?”

 

Hiromitsu shrugged and shook his head at the question. In his opinion they were talking about two completely different things.

 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Taisuke whispered and touched the shorter man’s cheek carefully. “You're wishing I could see those flowers, too. And you’d gladly become half blind if that meant I could see even with the other eye.”

 

Hiromitsu opened his mouth and closed it again when he realized he had no idea how to answer. He looked at Taisuke's empty grey eyes and nodded insecurely.

 

He couldn’t lie to Taisuke.

 

Two years ago in a battle the younger man had been hit on his face by a stray piece of a grenade that had taken his eyesight. After losing his eyes, though, Taisuke had learned to sense Hiromitsu’s feelings with all the other senses he still had, and his instinct almost never failed.

 

“Don’t worry about me. I remember what that tree looks like. I don’t need to see it - the scent is enough to remind me. I’m not feeling resentful anymore, so why should you?”

 

Hiromitsu nodded slowly and clenched Taisuke’s hand in his own. They just stood there in silence, and after a while the blackbird dared to fly back to the apple tree and continue its yearning songs. Maybe it was hoping the song would lead a possible mate to the same garden.

 

Hiromitsu smiled and leaned against the taller man. He had found his own a long time ago already, and despite the dark thoughts and terrible memories from the past years the only thing Hiromitsu could feel at that moment was gratitude. He was thankful that even after all the exhausting and dreadful years he could still keep Taisuke close to him.

\- - -


End file.
